He now seized the "policy" gambling game in the Harlem district of New York and took a hand in labor rackets. So dangerous did they become that Schultz went into hiding for a time, but not before Peter Coll was slain, and then Vincent and others of Schultz's enemies. He quarrelled with the Colls, however, and they wrecked one of his garages, together with trucks and supplies of beer, and then, with a new gang of their own, began killing his henchmen. Jack ("Legs") Diamond, Edward ("Fats") McCarthy, and the Coll brothers, Vincent and Peter, were at times (1929 - 32) in partnership with him in beer-running. Oddly enough, he was in terror of the law, and an arrest gave him such a nervous shock that at least once a physician was called to administer a bromide to him. He continued to be arrested at times on one charge and another, but was always discharged, though upon one occasion, in 1931, the police killed his bodyguard. This was during the prohibition era, and he now began trading in "bootleg" beer which he brought from New Jersey. Working at his roofer's trade, as a moving-van helper, and at odd jobs for a few years-during which time his record showed arrests for grand larceny, felonious assault, homicide, and carrying weapons, but no convictions-he finally became a partner in an illicit saloon in the Bronx in 1928. He was now given the nickname of a former bully of the neighborhood, Dutch Schultz, by which he was known ever afterward.
He had become a member of a youthful neighborhood gang before this incident, and his prison term enhanced his reputation among its members. He always thereafter carried his roofer's union card as "proof" that he was an honest laboringman.Īt seventeen he was convicted of the burglary of an apartment in the Bronx and served fifteen months in a reformatory. Later he was for a time an office-boy, and worked in a desultory way as a printer's apprentice and as a roofer. (age 32) Bronx, New York City, New York, United States
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